Cato’s Pilon: Obama Win Validates Politics of Personal Destruction

The re-election of President Barack Obama Tuesday doesn’t say good things about the state of politics, according to Roger Pilon, vice president of legal affairs for the Cato Institute.

“Obama's victory means, for now at least, that the politics of personal destruction and division by identity (‘Voting is the best revenge,’) has carried the day,” he writes on Politico.

“A thin majority of the electorate seem to believe that the laws of economics, which Obama has never understood, can be reversed.” The same thinking prevails in Greece, where citizens upset by the government’s austerity policies march in the streets, “as if that could reverse those laws,” Pilon says.

He wasn’t too impressed with Obama’s victory speech. The president’s line that "this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations" particularly galled Pilon.

“Future generations? This from the man who has overseen a $5 trillion increase in the debt that falls on those future generations?” he asks rhetorically.

Little has changed, with the House staying in Republican hands, Pilon says. “We're already hearing calls for the majority there to bend to the will of Obama, the Senate, and that thin majority. That would mark the end of the Republican Party, so it's not likely. Brace yourself, then. It's either gridlock, or self-destruction. Take your pick.”